Electricity Production

The Trailblazer Energy Center will generate approximately 765 megawatts (MW) gross and 600 MW net, using best available supercritical steam, pulverized coal technology. Six hundred megawatts is enough power to meet the around-the-clock needs of approximately 600,000 homes.

Carbon Management

Carbon dioxide is already the 19th largest commodity chemical in the United States. It is routinely separated and captured in other industrial processes, such as ammonia and hydrogen production, natural gas processing and limestone calcination. Carbon dioxide separation and capture technology have yet to be applied to new conventional coal-fueled power plants on a commercial scale, except in very small research and demonstration projects.

Texas passed its first laws related to the marketing and transportation of carbon dioxide in 1937. For more than 30 years, the Texas oil industry has been using carbon dioxide for EOR and geologic storage of the gas. In the Permian Basin today, approximately 180,000 barrels of oil per day are recovered by transporting carbon dioxide via pipeline into the region for EOR.

Environmental Advantages

Eighty-five to 90 percent of the carbon dioxide produced by the Tenaska Trailblazer Energy Center would be captured, dehydrated, compressed and delivered via pipeline to West Texas oil fields for use in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects from day one.

Tenaska’s proposed Trailblazer Energy Center will use best available technologies to meet or exceed all Texas and federal environmental standards.

The proposed Tenaska Trailblazer Energy Center will utilize an efficient supercritical steam cycle for generation, a proven technology that creates greater fuel efficiency.

Tenaska’s Trailblazer Energy Center will be designed to meet the environmental standards for sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury removal outlined in House Bill 3732, Texas’ “Advanced Clean Energy Project” legislation, passed in 2007.